Create layered PDF documents
By the Creative Team at Adobe.
Layers are an integral part of technical drawings. With Adobe® Acrobat® 7.0 Professional, you can preserve the layers in the Adobe PDF documents you create from Microsoft® Visio or Autodesk AutoCAD drawings. Choose which layers you want to include, and then, in Acrobat, show or hide individual layers, merge them, add bookmarks, or even add actions to the layers to customize the PDF document.
1. Convert the layered drawing to Adobe PDF.
In AutoCAD or Visio, click the Convert To Adobe PDF button on the toolbar. The button is automatically added to the AutoCAD or Visio application.
By default, Acrobat converts only the current page of a Visio drawing to PDF. If you want to convert all the pages in a drawing, choose Adobe PDF > Convert All Pages In Drawing before clicking the Convert To Adobe PDF button. Then select whether to flatten all layers, retain all layers, or retain some layers in the document, and click Continue.
In AutoCAD, select the layouts you want to include from the list on the left and click the Add button so that they appear in the Layouts in PDF list on the right. Next, either flatten or retain some or all of the layers before you convert them to PDF.
Unless you select the option to retain some layers in your Visio drawing or all layers in your AutoCAD drawing, you won’t see the dialog box that is discussed in the next two steps.
2. Select the layers you want to convert.
Select the layers you want to include from the list on the left and then click the Add Layer(s) button. The selected layers appear in the Layers in PDF list on the right.
To rename a layer, select it and type a new name. Select the Locked On option next to a layer name if the layer should always be visible in the PDF document; deselect the option to ensure you can change the visibility in Acrobat.
If a drawing has a background page or headers and footers, the PDF document automatically includes corresponding layers. Settings such as whether a layer is visible, printable, or locked are preserved in the PDF layer as the default; however, print and lock settings can be modified.
3. Create layer sets.
To add the layers to the PDF document as a set, select the layers you want to include in the set from the Layers in Visio Drawing (Visio) or Layers in Drawing list (AutoCAD), and then click Create Layer Set. Then edit the name of the layer set.
You can collapse and expand layers within a layer set by clicking the icon to the left of the layer set name. You can also add layers to an existing set.
4. Save PDF settings.
To save the layer configuration for future use, click Add PDF Setting (AutoCAD) or Save PDF Settings (Visio). In AutoCAD, name the PDF setting, and click OK.
Each page of a Visio file can store one layer setting. When you save a new setting, any prior PDF setting for that page is replaced. In AutoCAD, however, you can save multiple PDF settings, which are available in the PDF Setting menu. You can use these settings as they are, or you can edit and rename them at any time. Because PDF settings are stored in the drawing, you must save the drawing to save the settings.
5. Complete the conversion.
Click Convert To PDF when you've selected all the layers and created all the layer sets you want to include. Acrobat converts the layers you've selected into an Adobe PDF document.
6. Work with layers in Acrobat Professional.
Open the Adobe PDF document in Acrobat Professional. Then, click the Layers tab on the left side of the window, or choose View > Navigation Tabs > Layers to open the Layers tab. To hide a layer, click the eye icon; to show a layer, click the empty box.
You can display, navigate, print, rename, merge, change the properties of, and add actions to layers in Acrobat Professional. See “About Adobe PDF Layers” in Acrobat Help for more information about working with layers.
7. Distribute the layered Adobe PDF document.
Share the layered Adobe PDF document with other people. Anyone with version 6.0 or 7.0 of Acrobat Standard, Acrobat Professional, or Adobe Reader (available free from http://www.adobe.com) can view or print layers in a PDF document, and they can also show and hide the layers.
